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Pollux
A highly evolved, orange-red giant star, Pollux is still much smaller than the red supergiant Betelgeuse, at left. (See a Digitized Sky Survey image of Pollux from the Nearby Stars Database.) System is a Union System and has not been claimed by any other star faring society prior. It has eleven planets and three gas giants.The system is heavily developed and hs System Hub (Pollux Hub ) The sysem is listed under the name Pollux. See Pollux, system System Summary Pollux, or Beta Geminorum, is located about 33.7 light-years from Sol. Its original Greek name was Polydeuces, the immortal twin. Although Johannes Bayer (1572-1625) gave the first-rank Greek letter designation of Alpha to Castor around 1600, Pollux is actually the brightest star (7:45:19.0+28:1:34.3, ICRS 2000.0) of Constellation Gemini, the Twins. Hence, it has been suggested that one of these stars may have changed in luminosity during the past four centuries. As a highly evolved and relatively cool orange-red giant, single star, Pollux is not much like its "twin" star Castor, which is actually composed of three sets of binary stars (as many as four bluish-white, main sequence stars with two fainter companions). In any case, Pollux is the 17th brightest star in Earth's night sky and one of the stars of the Winter Circle. According to Robert Burnham, Jr. (1931-93), none of the faint visual companions to Pollux listed in the Aitken's Double Star (ADS) Catalogue -- published as the "New General Catalogue of Double Stars within 120 degrees of the North Pole" in 1932 by Robert Grant Aitken (1864-1955) in cooperation with William J. Hussey (1862-1926) -- are gravitationally bound. (See Akira Fujii's color photo of Pollux.) On June 16, 2006, astronomers confirmed the presence of a Jupiter-class planet around Pollux, that was first detected in 1993 (Hatzes et al, 2006; and Hatzes and Cochran, 1993 -- more below). (See an animation of the planet's orbit around Pollux, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.) Pre Astro As a star that has evolved out of the "main sequence," Pollux has fully shifted from the fusion of hydrogen to helium at its core to the fusion of helium to carbon and oxygen, with trace activity of other nuclear processes. This helium-burning, orange-red giant stage is relatively brief, lasting tens to hundreds of million years (e.g., lasting around 700 million years for a star of one Solar mass like the Sun). Eventually, the star will lose much of its current mass, from an intensified stellar wind that eventually puffs out its outer gas envelopes of hydrogen and helium (and lesser amounts of higher elements such as carbon and oxygen) into interstellar space as a planetary nebula. The result will be a planet-sized, white dwarf core that gradually cools and fades in brightness from the shutdown of thermonuclear fusion. (Nearby white dwarfs include solitary Van Maanen's Star and the dim companions of Sirius, Procyon, and 40 (Omicron2) Eridani.) H. Bond (STSci), R. Ciardullo (PSU), WFPC2, HST, NASA -- larger image (White dwarfs are remnant stellar cores that have cast off their outer gas layers, like planetary nebula NGC 2440.) Planet "b" On June 16, 2006, a team of astronomers (including Artie P. Hatzes, William D. Cochran, E. Endl, E.W. Guenther, S.H. Saar, G.A.H. Walker, S. Yang, M. Hartmann, M. Esposito, and D.B. Paulson) confirmed the presence of a Jupiter-class planet "b" around Pollux, that was first detected in 1993 (Hatzes et al, 2006; and Hatzes and Cochran, 1993). Assuming that Pollux has 1.7 Solar-masses, planet b has a minimum mass of 2.3 +/- 0.45 Jupiter-masses. It moves around Pollux at an average distance of 1.64 +/- 0.27 AUs in a nearly circular orbit (e= 0.02 +/- 0.03) that takes 1.6 years (589.64 +/- 0.81 days) to complete. The presence of the planet has been confirmed by continued monitoring (Quirrenbach et al, 2011). (See an animation of the planet's orbit around Pollux, with a table of basic orbital and physical characteristics.) Category:Solar Systems